Close to 30 people escaped from a plane at Barcelona’s airport after it made an emergency landing for a woman who appeared to be faking childbirth.
A Pegasus Airlines flight from Casablanca, Morocco, to Istanbul had 228 passengers on board when an emergency landing was requested by the crew because a woman appeared to be in labour.
The plane landed at Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport and as the so-called pregnant woman was getting evacuated from the plane, 27 passengers exited the aircraft without authorisation and “tried to flee”, officials said.
Police stopped 13 - but 14 are still on the run.
Five of the 13 passengers who were caught by the police agreed to get back on the plane and continue on to Istanbul.
The other eight were getting processed for non-admission to Spain and expected to be put on another Pegasus flight out of the country, officials said.
The Spanish government’s office did not divulge the nationalities of the passengers who escaped but it is believed they were all migrants.
The woman was detained on charges of public disorder after doctors at a hospital concluded that despite being pregnant, she was not about to give birth.
This seeming operation has happened before and it was just over a year ago when a group of passengers did the same thing.
A plane heading from Casablanca to Istanbul did an emergency landing in Mallorca under false pretexts when a group fled the plane onto the runway - 12 of them were arrested, while 12 others escaped.
A month ago, a woman did legitimately give birth in the air. Kendria Rhoden, 21, flew at 32 weeks because her baby was not due until the end of October.
But at 36,000 feet in the air, Ms Rhoden's water broke and she gave birth to Skylen Kavon-Air Francis.
Her sister Kendalee Rhoden, 26, shared a clip of the incredible story on TikTok in September, and the video has since amassed more than a million views.
"Thankfully there were four people who came to my sister's aid. She was taken to the back of the plane and after an extremely stressful 20 minutes, an announcement was made that we'd got a new passenger aboard, a beautiful baby boy named Skylen," her sister Kendalee said.
